Several students apart of the Sustainability Living-Learning Community attended the 2017 AASHE Student Summit and participated in a Bee Campus USA workshop. These students decided that the University should obtain Bee Campus USA Certification for UIUC. Displaying signage focused on pollinator conservation was one of the requirements for this certification. Four signs were installed, and since their installment UIUC is a part of Bee Campus USA.

Attached is the full report.

Information about how commercial bee keeping functions and its impact to overall bee populations was inquired about by Brent Lewis, Landscape Architect. Below is the response from Adam Donzel, an Assistant Professor in Entomology. 

'Hi Brent,

Yeah, there is work on that.  Here are links to couple studies about it:

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep32023

https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/22/1/17/6523145

Basically, yes, there are some stresses involved with migratory beekeeping but sedentary colonies can also have similar issues. In some scenarios, migratory colonies could be healthier as they are moved to areas with good nutritional resources all the time, while those left in place have to deal with times of low food availability. In reality, though, migratory colonies do undergo a lot of stress as they are used to pollinate crops and a lot goes into that - the stress of confinement, heat, exposure to agrochemicals, etc. From a beekeeping perspective, this is calculated into the fees charged for pollination (to some extent at least). Right now, beekeepers charge about $200/hive to pollinate almonds for example (the most lucrative pollination event). Big beekeepers manage 20,000-50,000 hives!  "Small" commercial beekeepers usually have 2-5000.

Migratory beekeeping uses about 85% of the managed colonies in the USA (incredible!). One big issue with this is that, if a new pest or pathogen is introduced, it will be spread throughout the country very fast. And in big pollination events, like almonds, hives are concentrated at very high densities, which does present a lot of opportunities for spreading diseases. They do mitigate this to some extent, however, as there are health checks required to move bees across state lines, and almond growers usually require checks of colonies to make sure they are healthy.

Hope this helps - always happy to answer questions when I can!"

The following message was sent to Morgan White to share with Carbon Credit Fund Administrators by Thurman Etchison, the Assistant Director of Dining - Facilities and Equipment, on November 18, 2021. The email & attachments contain important information regarding the potential installation of a Grind2Energy system at LAR:

Carbon Credit Fund Administrators,

Housing Dining Services is seeking funds to add a Grind 2 Energy system to our Lincoln Avenue Dining Hall. Grind 2 Energy is a system that allows us to put our food waste into a pumpable slurry so that it may be taken to an anerobic digester at the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District. These systems replace the aerobic digesters we previously had in our dining units. The aerobic digesters had issues with the effluent not meeting EPA standards.

This system would be our fifth and likely final system as we would have one at every residential dining location. These are operational at Ikenberry, PAR, FAR and ISR. Currently, University Housing does not have resources to fund this project due to the impact of COVID on our budget. We would reach out to the Student Sustainability Committee for funding but for us to do the infrastructure work and have the unit installed prior to the next school year, we need to start before the next round of submissions.

The use of Grind 2 Energy has been a very successful program for us. It meets our needs, keeps us in compliance with regulatory bodies, is comparable in costs to other methods of disposal. It is very sustainable in terms of the environment. To date, we have diverted 289 tons of food waste even though there was limited use until this school year.

The amount we are requesting is $133,538.00. A simple breakdown of our expected costs is below. As our tradespeople have installed the 4 previous units, we believe this number to be very accurate. Our last unit came in within $1000 of our estimate.

LAR Grind 2 Energy – Preliminary Budget Cost

• LAR Grind 2 Energy System (equipment and labor)…..................................................................... $86,000
  • (Rigging fees)........................................................................................................................... $4,650
• Concrete Slab Work (existing planter modifications site work & new concrete slab)….................... $23,100
• New Wall at Table (Demolition, floor work, ceiling work, MEP & new wall)…................................... $19,788
• TOTAL:                                                                                                                                              $133,538

I would like to add that these units are highly visible on campus and it is our intention to start highlighting the metrics in our dining units via electronic messaging. This may include digital displays, The Housing Insider and social media platforms. There is also great deal of interest in biogas impact from these units. I have met with 2 groups of students from the CEE 190 class about these units in the past month.

In short, this program reduces carbon emissions, produces fertilizer and creates energy. The systems are highly reliable and have had almost no issues to date. Please see the attachments for additional info.

Thank you for your consideration, 

THURMAN ETCHISON

Assistant Director of Dining - Facilities and Equipment

The link was updated for the primary Bee Campus USA page and some adjustments were made to links that were not responsive. The following links were added in the Bee City/Campus USA main page: 

http://beecampususa.web.illinois.edu/

https://www.facebook.com/Bee-Campus-USA-at-UIUC-228849297661692/

https://www.beecityusa.org/what-is-a-bee-campus.html

Previous Title: Reusable Dining Options

Previous Project Description: The Zero Waste SWATeam is interested in pursuing reusable service options for campus facilities which serve food at any capacity. This particularly applies to to-go options.

A to-go option using reusable containers will be implemented this fall in University Housing Dining at three locations: Lincoln Avenue Dining, Illinois Street Dining and Ikenberry Dining.  

Previous Project Background: 

As stated in the iCAP 2020, 

"Objective #5.3 ensures that items used on campus-particularly at large events- are durable, repairable, and reusable, and that they contribute to our university-wide culture of reuse."

This project is aligned with the goals of cultivating a zero waste culture on campus. Food is an enormous portion of the human experience, and rather than eliminate it, the Zero Waste SWATeam hopes to shift the paradigm towards the sustainable future the University of Illinois is planning. By providing opportunities for students to utilize reusable containers and participate in a reusable dining program, it will not only yield measurable reductions of single-use items in the waste stream, but will also bring sustainability to the forefront of each participant.